Even though I've Posted a few Times on The Pebble Mine I for one don't have a negative View of Mining having Worked in The Coal Mining Industry in Australia for many years however there are many things I've seen over many years about Mining I don't Like.

1.A Former Government OK'd a Deal to sell Natural gas to China for 5 cents /litre for 25 Years when we pay over 80 Cents.
2.Most of The Iron Ore,Copper Coal etc Mines are Foreign Run & lots of The Country is also Foreign owned & yes all of The Profits go out of The Country thus we haven't any infrastructure.
3 After Travelling around much of Australia & have seen where it has been torn up,& is still being done & many Companies have conveniently gone Broke & again departed & left great Holes in The Ground where The Minerals once were.
Finally now many Farmers are now having problems with Coal Seam Gas Drilling with Santos.
So The Bottom Line is,it doesn't matter where you are everything is Political as just Last year some of our Former Politicians & a Former Union Boss OK'd a deal for a New Coal Mine to go ahead where they made Millions & now they have been investigated & hopefully they will all be Jailed.

So I as well as many others know how big a Tragedy if Pristine Country in Alaska is Ripped Up.
Brian.

Even though I've Posted a few Times on The Pebble Mine I for one don't have a negative View of Mining having Worked in The Coal Mining Industry in Australia for many years however there are many things I've seen over many years about Mining I don't Like.

1.A Former Government OK'd a Deal to sell Natural gas to China for 5 cents /litre for 25 Years when we pay over 80 Cents.
2.Most of The Iron Ore,Copper Coal etc Mines are Foreign Run & lots of The Country is also Foreign owned & yes all of The Profits go out of The Country thus we haven't any infrastructure.
3 After Travelling around much of Australia & have seen where it has been torn up,& is still being done & many Companies have conveniently gone Broke & again departed & left great Holes in The Ground where The Minerals once were.
Finally now many Farmers are now having problems with Coal Seam Gas Drilling with Santos.
So The Bottom Line is,it doesn't matter where you are everything is Political as just Last year some of our Former Politicians & a Former Union Boss OK'd a deal for a New Coal Mine to go ahead where they made Millions & now they have been investigated & hopefully they will all be Jailed.

So I as well as many others know how big a Tragedy if Pristine Country in Alaska is Ripped Up.
Brian.

I'm not really sure about the logic of these arguments...

Natural gas has little to do with a copper operation and if we were to use examples of idiotic government actions as a reason to veto everything, America would come to a screeching halt... We are all about upside down government economics over here. It's a good thing that mining is run by the private sector.

Argument two is totally wrong. Most mines now are run by large mining companies as they are the only ones with the resources to get a mine up and running and they also have the ability to weather the downturns of the global economy that the small outfits don't. It's a global society we live in. As an example, I own stock in Anglo American, as do many people in the US. It's naive to believe that all the profits get taken away to some foreign land. The local supporting infrastructure will receive billions over the life of a mine and that is not even counting the jobs that are created in and around the mine. You should know this as a coal miner... ??

Number three is not a valid argument either. The United States and most other countries require a bond to be put up by the mine operator before the first shovelful of ore is moved. The bond covers the cost of reclamation after the mine is exhausted. This covers bankruptcy. In order to recover the millions that have been put up, the mining company has to follow very strict reclamation plans that take several years and the whole thing is monitored by government inspectors. The bond is enormous and no company ever just walks away from it. As an example, a Nevada mine was putting water back into the creek that was cleaner than the water coming into the mine from the same creek. They were actually written up for the water being "too clean". The filtered water had no sediment in it and that increased the erosive capability of the stream downstream of the mine. Water quality had to be lowered to better match the local environment....

Lastly, coal seam gas has very little to do with copper. That is like saying "I'm going to have problems with my Ford truck because a guy in Australia had a Deutz tractor lock up."

I do agree, everything is political. There are a million ways the government can screw a person over during their lifetime, but we simply can not use these types of arguments in making decisions about future mining operations.

Mining almost always happens in "pristine areas". That's the nature of the beast since everyone has a "not in my backyard" attitude.

Making decisions based on faulty logic, lack of information, and/or because something bad once happened in a totally unrelated situation is just not good.

People need to educate themselves on the facts before they make up their minds.

The real bottom line is... If you can't grow it, then you have to mine it.